


We do what we can (with what we can't)

by Kara_luna



Series: Everything changed the day Ozai got fucking yeeted to hell [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Azula (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Female Zuko (Avatar), Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Azula (Avatar), Sane Azula (Avatar), What if?, Zuko (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Zuko is a thirty year old woman named Zoka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26017831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kara_luna/pseuds/Kara_luna
Summary: What if Zuko was born 20 years before Azula.What if Azula was more a daughter than a sister and had someone who genuinely loved and supported her?What if Ozai made the worst decision of his life?What if Iroh was dead long before the series started?What if. Zoka was a mother before she was a soldier, and kind before she was angry, and forgave before she hurt. What if she wasn't an angry, abused, and confused little boy just trying to get home, but a grown woman who's seen the horror of who her father is and is determined to protect the child the world calls the avatar because that's all he is to her.A child. And she watched her child burn once, she will NEVER, let it happen again.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Hinted Zuko/Hakoda, Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Katara & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Zuko & Zuko's Crew (Avatar)
Series: Everything changed the day Ozai got fucking yeeted to hell [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1920211
Comments: 34
Kudos: 388





	We do what we can (with what we can't)

**Author's Note:**

> Guys, if anyone wants to use this idea or continue this fic, seriously just let me know and DO IT. This idea has a TON of potential but I just don't have the time, energy, or willpower to explore it right now, so if anyone else would like to, DEFINITELY DO IT. I only ask for you to let me know before hand and to credit me somewhere in the fic :)

Zuko is born Zoka, and this does not change _everything._ Zoka is born 20 years before Azula and that _starts_ to change things. Zoka is not Zuko and that changes _everything._

Her father still burns her, still casts her from the Fire Nation’s grace, still abandons her all alone on a ship of scarred ghosts, but… 

Azula is born a year after Zoka’s uncle succumbs to his age, and receiving the greatest gift of her life is the only thing that keeps Zoka from flinging herself from the same tower her mother did a decade and a half ago. 

Azula is born exactly ten months after Ozai takes a woman to be his second wife and Zoka meets a woman who will love her more than her own child. 

Azula is born and Zoka’s been a firebending master for a decade. 

Azula is not the one to bear the brunt of being Ozai’s daughter, not even close. 

Azula is sent away the day before their Agni Kai. 

Azula is told of her sister’s fate a week later and a thousand miles away and still arrives at the palace in a matter of hours. 

Azula hears her father sneer Zoka’s fate… and

she

breaths

_fire._

Because Zoka’s mother winked out like a star gone dark, dissipated before her eyes one scary evening when nothing made sense and she saw the strongest woman she ever knew _cry_ for the first and last time. 

Because Ursa could never love the shattered mirror image of Azula’s soul, twisted and _wrong,_ born to a father she’s destined to become. But Zoka peered behind the swaddling of a screaming babe and everything clicked. 

Because Zoka looked at her baby sister and only saw everything that was _right._

Sure, Azula could be petulant, screaming whenever Zoka didn’t do what she wanted, and she could be violent, sparking flames along her fingernails like talons, but Zoka could see what Ursa couldn’t. 

Azula wasn’t doing it to be cruel. She just… Didn’t know _how_ she was _supposed_ to be. She wailed and was silent and threw tantrums and pouted quietly and burned and asked politely, and all she needed was a guide to tell her which of those behaviors were right.

Neither knew it, but in another world, where Zoka didn’t gather her sister up in her arms to explain why she couldn’t take her shirt off like papa and eventually reassured her twitching sister when her sheets were covered in blood during the night, Zoka wasn’t the one who taught Azula right from wrong. 

Their father did. 

He taught her it didn’t matter, right or wrong, as long as it was to the benefit of them. He taught her what weakness was and he taught it _wrong._ Taught violence and abuse and torture instead of love, and then was dissapointed when a soldier was all she could ever become. 

Disappointed she wasn’t the ruler he sired her to be, even when she knew nothing of democracy or subtly or respect. Even when she knew nothing of kindness or humility or selflessness. 

Even when she was too broken to be much of anything anymore. 

But in _this world,_ Zoka is a woman and she’s the closest thing to a mother Azula’s ever had. In _this_ world, Zoka loves her stepmother but she also hates her, she sees her flaws and understands what she’s done, but she isn’t blinded by the love _she_ was shown. 

Because gods’ know, Azula was never given _any of that and it’s not_ **_fair._ **

Zoka’s a child and an adult and a daughter and mother and broken and fixing someone else the best she can, and maybe it breaks her instead. Maybe it makes everything worse and it’s all going to be for nothing, and Azula will become the monster Zoka has tried her best to keep her from being-

_But she’s her little sister._

Maybe it’s all for nothing, but _god dammit_ Zoka will give every shattered part of herself she’s got left to her sister and if it doesn’t work, then at least she gave it her all. At least Azula had a fucking chance, at least she knew some form of love before she’s gone, and that’s _enough._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


But it isn’t all for nothing. Because Zoka speaks up in that council meeting and looks death in the eye and loses the meager beauty she once had, but Azula comes for her. She comes, and she _burns._

And in one vengeful action, Ozai loses two heirs instead of one. 

And now the only one he’s got left is halfway across the world with a face of bandaged scars and no loyalty left in her heart for the nation that’s ripped away the only two things in the world she ever loved. 

But what truly proves she is _nothing_ like her father in the end of it all?

Zoka loses everything but she never loses her mercy. Her kindness. Her patience. The things she learned at a little Pao Sho board with a smiling man who called her daughter even though she wasn’t and loved her like she was. 

The things she learned as a mother to a girl with a brain out of balance that _isn’t her fault,_ even when she wasn’t one. Because she might as well have been. Might as well have been the daughter of a man who loved tea and poetry and the mother of a girl who lit her curtains on fire on accident with the fire birds she conjured to make Zoka laugh. 

Because Zoka suffered the worst of the world beneath the thumb of a father who pushed her mother to an edge she fell from and splattered on the rocks under, forced her stepmother’s hand to commit murder for all the right and wrong reasons that should never have existed, and left his brother all alone to mourn the worst loss a father could ever know. 

But worst of all, he left her beautiful, bright, _incredible daughter, sister_ a pile of ash on his throne room floor, and she will _never_ forgive that. 

But god dammit, will she _never_ be like him either. 

>>>>>>>>>>>>

So… Zoka does the only thing she knows how to. 

She’s kind. (The one thing Ozai could never be)

She brings out the Pai Sho board she managed to smuggle aboard before they set sail, the one that still holds her uncle’s twinkling eyes, and she asks if anyone on the crew would like to play a round. 

At first, they glance nervously between themselves, rocking on their heels as if she’s a trap they have no intention of springing, but Zoka waits. Patience, it’s one of the things her daughter taught her long ago, and if she can wait out Azula’s temper, she can wait out anything. 

(The memory of her, golden eyes and ink hair and smirk full of fire and _life…_ It hurts to remember, but it hurts worse to forget. Only sixteen. Just a little girl in her eyes, _fuck_ what the world thinks, she deserved better. Azula deserved a father who loved her and an uncle still alive and a mother who could be more than just a broken, scarred slip of shadow on the wall compared to her flaring light. 

And Zoka couldn’t give that to her. But she can do what she can, every single day forward to give that to everyone else like Azula. Like herself. 

For every other soldier who’s seen the worst of a war without two sides.)

Eventually the lieutenant, her second in command, puffs out his chest and steps forward. He’s quite good at the game and she can feel the crew’s fear as they watch over their shoulders, rigging up lines and mopping the floor as if they’re not watching just as intently as the players. 

Zoka even sees the moment that Jee realizes he’s lost. 

It’s when he encircles the center of the board with his harmony ring, ending the game with his victory, that she watches the color drain from the faces of all those around her. She’s just a young woman sitting cross legged on the floor, ally less, weaponless, and completely unfamiliar with sailing vessels, yet they’re afraid. 

She hates it. 

Jee pushes back his shoulders and meets her eyes, unyielding and afraid and so very brave despite it all, and Zoka gently palms the lotus tile, the only one she hasn’t used. The only one she never uses. 

“I believe you’ll make better use of this than me, Lieutenant.” She smiles gently, offering it to him with an open hand rather the closed fist she knows he was expecting. Rather than the fist she’s expected every single day of her life for the crime of being human. 

Because Ozai would ask you to play with your arm twisted behind your back and punish you if you ever dared to win, and Zoka _will not be like him._

Jee hesitates, but he takes it. 

They’re weary but they’re also curious now, their eyes searing into the back of her head, and she can work with that. She can work with Jee’s nervous bow and the mop boy’s cocked head. 

Yes, she can work with this. 

“So. Who’d like to beat me next!”

And slowly… Zoka is taught how to play Pai Sho, even without her uncle there to teach her. 

>>>>>>>>>>>

They’re _technically_ looking for the avatar, but Jee doesn’t even bother telling her of potential last sightings or rumors anymore. He’s realized how little she cares. He _does_ offhandedly mention, when charting their next course, that Tyrene - the deck officer - once told him about a midsummer festival she attended as a child at a ship port near Kyoshi. 

Tyrene, the hardened warrior fresh off the battlefield who still swings her sword at those who approach her too quickly, speaking about the childhood she barely knew with a far off look of _happiness._

Zoka orders him to change course without the briefest hesitation, to the island for replenishing their supplies. She pointedly ignores the glint in his amber eyes that always makes her so damn uncomfortable. 

“It’s for supplies.” She says flatly. 

“Of course, your highness.” He smirks right back, as unconvinced as he always is. 

But he’s not surprised, and that makes Zoka smile late at night when she’s lying in bed and her pillow can hide it. Because he expected her to forgo their entire mission and purpose for the sake of a girl she’s barely managed to say two sentences to, and it makes something in her chest ignite. 

Zoka hasn’t used her flames since that horrid day. Not because of her face - no, she cares little about her ruin of a face - but because fire is what took her daughter away. Fire, the element that should have protected Azula, killed her in the most horrific way possible. 

She isn’t afraid of it, not even a little bit. Zoka hasn’t used fire since that day…

Because she just can’t find it in herself to _forgive it._

>>>>>>>>>>.

They do find the avatar eventually, but it isn’t on purpose. 

They’re in the Southern Sea of Ice, dodging icebergs and pestering Zoka for firebending perks until she finally cracks and sets Sio on fire. To be fair, he was the one whining about being cold and their fire nation issued coats being “fuzzy-less” and “a disgrace to comfortableness everywhere.” 

She rolled her eyes so far back in her head, she didn’t notice there was a mop right in front of her, which she promptly face planted in. When she stumbled back, stopped seeing black spots, and recognized what the hell she’d just walked into, she was also able to register Sio doubled over in laughter. 

Jee was smirking off to the side as always, but only one of them she could live without. 

She felt no guilt grabbing one of the torches hanging on the mast and lighting his coat cuff on fire. Watching him shriek was vindictively pleasant actually. The healer put him out of his misery with the usual bored expression, dumping, not just the water, but also the _bucket_ over the flaming idiot’s head. 

When his lips started chattering from the freezing air, Zoka _did_ feel bad and thus she cracked. 

She bent fire for the first time in a lifetime, bent it like the girl with her name who died long ago and like the girl she’s become at the same time. The fire is tightly controlled in her hands, running vibrant yellow and orange, but when she reaches out to run her hands an inch over his coat, it changes. 

It _jumps._

The world stops for her, even as Doro is adjusting the seals and Ryo is at the wheel following Po’s directions at the hull even as Jee stands abruptly from the barrel he’s been using as a seat. The world outside of her bubble moves, but the world within? 

It’s slow motion, yet it’s far too fast for her to stop. 

The flames jump like a living creature, latching onto Sio’s sleeve and spreading up until everything is covered in a glorious haze of fire. He looks just as shocked as she does, locking eyes with her. 

Gold on gold, both lit by his wreath of dancing orange. 

But he continues to look shocked, gently reaching out to touch the flame smoldering against his cheek in awe. The burning on her back intensifies by the second until Zoka’s sure that there isn’t one person on the entire ship who hasn’t seen what she just did. 

She opens her mouth to apologize-

“This is incredible! I had no idea firebenders could do this! I just thought your fire was like, _normal fire_ and burnt everything and stuff. _So cool.”_ Sio grins ear to ear, running fingers through the flames as if the fur on a dog-cat. 

“We can’t.” She murmurs, brain working slowly because this isn’t possible. Fire burns everything it touches, she _knows._ Gods help her, _she knows._ But the crew swarm them and she can’t break from her haze of shock to stop them before they’re all sticking their hands into her flames, warming themselves despite the obvious danger. 

Jee is watching her from the back of the crowd, smiling slightly as if everything makes sense. As if his instincts are what made him jump up, not the sincere belief she would hurt someone with her flames. 

It’s impossible, she thinks. All fire ever does is destroy. Their healder, Guen wacks people away with his cane until he too can examine the fire. His thoughtful humming tells Zoka exactly what he thinks of her newfound ability. How useful he’s already figured out it could be. Hypothetically. 

If she didn’t burn someone to death before then. 

She can’t control the jerk of her body at that unwelcome thought. She’s not him, she’s _not_ her father. Watching the fire dance across her friends’ bodies, leaping from one to the next without the slightest red skin or blister, she _knows_ she is not him. 

And she finally finds it in herself to forgive the fire for all it’s done, because this? This is a promise, a promise sealed in orange and yellow, death and blood, fate and destiny. 

A promise that it will not fail her again. 

That does not change, even when a beam of blue light erupts twenty leagues to their right and the fire is snuffed out. Even when they get closer, and leaning over the rail of her ship, Zoka sees three small figures on an ice patch and a huge creature like nothing she’s ever seen, behind them. 

(Because Zoka doesn’t know it yet, but the flame will not break the oath it’s sworn, not even for the avatar.)

“Jee! Stop the ship. Domo, pull up all but one of our sails and Sio! Make yourself useful and go get some blankets!” Her crew snaps back into their military upbringing in seconds, laughter and friendships forgotten in the time it takes Guen to hobble back under the deck for medical supplies if necessary. 

Going off the unconscious state of one of the kids and the fact he’s wearing next to nothing in the middle of the Southern Sea of Ice, there’s something very wrong here. The other two kids look terrified and angry and one has a spear. Zoka isn’t exactly optimistic about how this encounter will go, but she’ll do her best. 

Effortlessly, she hops up onto the railing, ignoring the way her stomach flips as the children tense up, how the brother stumbles in front of his sister, spear raised and shaking, the fear of death in their eyes. 

It makes her sick that she could make someone that afraid.

Grabbing a rope and sliding her way down the ship’s side in a move Jee’s been quietly disapproving of since the first time she did it by Kyoshi island and nearly gotten eaten by the Unagi, and _not so quietly_ by Guen the first time he had to patch her up after a brawl at a port. 

(He’d grumbled and groaned about using his valuable recipes and wasting his time and “youths these days,” but he also never scolded her for taking down that fire nation soldier tormenting a poor woman and her earth bending son. 

And when she came back to him, bruised and blackened, armed wrapped around a little girl with red eyes and a torn dress to see him, the look of fury on his face chased off any thought of him not being such a purely _good_ person under the rough exterior. 

After that one, he’d taken her face in his palms and looked her in the eyes and _kissed her forehead_ and showed no reaction to the way she sobbed and sobbed into his arms that night. Because he was the father she never had and the uncle she once did and it killed her just as much as it made her _hope.)_

The ice crunches under her boots and it brings her back to herself. Reaching up she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, the strands so long they brush her thighs even with half of them braided back as they are. 

She tugs on a piece of it, telling the children without a spoken word, to look. _Look._ At her hair, at the way it’s braided, the very specific way it’s breaded. It’s not a fire nation top knot, she couldn’t stomach one even if she tried, but instead a mix of twisted earth kingdom hair that’s spirals interlocking braids, and the traditional shaved hair along her right temple the Kyoshi warriors taught her in exchange for a lesson on her dual sabres. 

And, of course, the beaded braids that accompany the others, twisting half her hair back from her face and showing off the vicious red skin over her left eye. The beads that are every shade of white and gray and green and black and blue. 

She shows them, first, before approaching the kids, still very much on edge and precariously close to trying to hurt her and hurting themselves in the process, that she has no spec of red anywhere on her. Clothes black, sails flapping above her white, not a flag flown in sight. 

It calms the wild look in the boy's eye, but Zoka’s concern remains just as strongly as before. The girl on her knees behind him, holding the freezing boy in her arms, has the eyes of- not an animal backed into a corner - but a creature about to be unleashed from a cage it’s been trapped in for far too long. 

She feels herself subconsciously softening, azula’s image flashing over the crouched southern water tribe member. 

“Hello. I’m Zoka, and I apologize if my crew’s startled you. We saw what we presumed to be a distress signal of some kind - perhaps a flare - and came to offer aid.” She begins. 

“What are you really here for, fire nation scum.” The girl spits. 

Zoka shifts onto her left foot as the ice beneath her rocks slightly. Oh. Well then… Zoka re-evaluates the girl. A waterbender. Perhaps the very last waterbender in the entire southern water tribe. _Of course,_ she would assume that Zoka’s ship was here for her. 

It’s probably been a fear haunting her since the day of her birth, and that’s something Zoka can relate to on many _many_ levels. 

“I’m not here for you, if that’s what you think. My crew and I have no interest in waterbenders or the war going on, we’re just wanderers.”

“Wanderers in a fire nation military ship?” The boy pipes up and the spear is once again being raised to point at her. 

“Yes.” She huffs a laugh at the ludicrousy of the situation. “Technically, we’re on a _very_ important mission to capture _the avatar,_ and bring him back to the fire lord to be unbanished. Chasing after a fairytale just so we can return to a nation that would shove us into a war we have no interest in fighting.” 

Curiously, the girl’s face pales quickly and her brother, he really has to be her brother or she’s reading this situation _all_ wrong, locks eyes with her, giving off signals of “what are we going to do,” “I’m about to freak out,” and “I love you so much it hurts.” 

The guilt gnawing at her stomach bites viciously down on her liver at the way he looks at her as if it’s the last time. 

Then the boy in the girl’s lap wakes up, sees her, and _everything_

_changes._

>>>>>>>>>>>

Eventually the siblings - Sokka and Katara - reluctantly agree to bring her back to their village but they’re very strict about her coming alone and her crew staying right there. Zoka is more than happy to do that if it makes them feel better and stops the confused puppy dog eye look the bald kid - the _avatar_ \- is giving everyone. 

She scales the side of the boat easily, plopping back onto the deck to the sight of her entire crew waiting for her. She pauses for a moment, a little stunned by their expectant looks. 

“Uh. We’ve come to an- _arrangement._ I can go back to their village with them, but I have to go alone. You’ll all have to wait here for me and-”

“Why is it so important you go?” Sio breaks in, uncharacteristically serious. 

“Ive- The flare we saw? It wasn’t a distress call exactly… It was the avatar.”

There’s a few chuckles and good natured rolling of eyes before she starts to see realization in their faces as her expression doesn’t change. 

“You’re serious? The avatar’s been dead for a hundred years.”Tyrene scoffs from the back. 

“Do you have proof?” Jee cuts in. 

“Yes. He showed me his airbending and then a bit of waterbending he must have just done instinctually. But he’s the real deal.”

“And what will you do now?”

Zoka considers that, scanning the crew that she’s spent the last three years taking care of and being taken care of by. Sio with his stupid jokes, Domo who can’t tie a proper knot, Tyrene who still has awful nightmares, Guen who needs no introduction, Jee who’s been her right hand man right from the start when he stepped up to face her in Pai Sho, and all the rest she still hasn’t gotten to know nearly as much as she wants to. 

All right in front of her, waiting for her orders for the first time because they truly have no idea what to do next. Because for once they expect _her_ to. 

“I’m going to help him end this war.” The words come out without her even thinking them, but they ring true in the cool air of the South. 

“And how can we help?” Ryo asks from the side where he’s leaning his wooden leg against a barrel. 

Her father thought he was doing her a great disservice by giving her this crew of outcasts and misfits, disgraces and “not good enoughs,” but he had actually done her the greatest kindness anyone ever has. 

He gave her a family, a new start, a new chance, a _future._ Even if he didn’t realize it, he’d given her the greatest crew she could ever ask for. 

“Leave. Go sail the world, see everything from the air temples to the earth kingdom’s swamps. Leave her, leave the war, and find a place for yourselves out there doing what you love. Wandering.”

Zoka takes a deep breath, blinking away the sudden wetness of her eyes as she drinks in the sight of all these people she desperately loves with everything she has left, with everything she didn’t even know she _had_ anymore. 

She loves them, and she’s saying goodbye. 

“Okay, Zoka.” Jee smiles, and he uses her name for the first in the three years she’s known him. One by one, they each chorus they’re agreement, even as she watches the way they’re eyes blink rapidly and there’s pain in their faces, just like it’s in her’s. 

There’s no words to say all they need to in this short window of time they have left, but Zoka reaches down, deep inside her and grasps that burning in her middle. She brings the flames over her fingers and weaves the most beautiful blanket she can, of the oranges and yellows of the sun and everything she wishes she had the emotional range to communicate. 

She steps forward and passes the fire to Jee and is unsurprised when it does not burn. It smolders in his arms, the light catching on his silver armor like the flash of a whole moon. She’ll miss him as she misses Azula and her uncle and mother, but Jee?

He’ll still be out there somewhere, and someday, when all this horror is over, and her father is finally gone, she’s going to go out and she’s going to find him. She’s going to find all of them, and she’s going to give them a real home. 

“Do me one last favor.” She croaks, eyes catching on Guen in the back, leaning on his cane with small rivulets of tears running down his cheeks but a smile like cracked starlight. With the proudest expression she’s ever seen on someone’s face, let alone directed at her. 

Her heart sings and screams. 

“ _Live the most incredible lives,_ and be _happy.”_

>>>>>>>>>

Sokka and Katara don’t mention the tears that have frozen on her cheeks. Aang, the _avatar,_ is very much the child he looks to be and has no qualms about asking. Her reply is cracked and brittle. 

“I said goodbye to my family for the last time.”

His smile slips into something grim and knowing and Zoka can see the hint of wiseness and old old old hiding behind his eyes as the cheery facade slips just a fraction. 

They’re trek through the snow is blessedly short, and then they’re standing before a tiny village of igloos completely different from what she expected. 

Sokka stares her down as she takes it all in, waiting for her to say something rude or give him any reason at all to kick her out. She doesn’t give him one, just follows behind them without a word. 

The villagers watch warely from their doorways, some living in tents among the ice blocked homes of others. A child gasps and points at her scar and his mother scolds him quietly, dragging him back into their tent with a wary glance her way. 

“This is our tent.” Sokka declares, glaring at her defiantly. She ducks under the flap and gently settles herself on a row of cushions in the front room without comment. There’s a second room off of the first where bedrolls seem to be stacked and trinkets litter the area. 

It’s… warm, somehow. 

Zoka’s attention is swiftly captured as an old woman shoves through the flap, followed shortly by the kids who all look properly chastised, except Aang of course. Said bald monk plops down beside her, vibrating with contained energy. 

“I don’t suppose you can keep yourself warm then?” She asks slightly sarcastically. 

“I can!” He chirps. “I thought, at first, that it was just a normal thing all people could do, but the monks told me it was because I’ve mastered airbending.” 

“Huh… Interesting an airbender can sufficiently keep himself warm but a firebender can’t, you think?” 

His responding grin tells her he completely agrees at the irony of it. 

“And who’s this?” The old woman croaks from the other room where the other two were dragged to for some kind of conversation. 

“I’m Zoka.” She interrupts before Sokka can respond, earning herself a glare from both siblings. The old woman though, just smiles with her missing teeth. 

“I’m Kana, but everyone here just calls me Gran-Gran.”

Zoka quirks an eyebrow. “I’m Zoka but everyone usually just calls me incompetant, so take your pick.” 

Kana or Gran-Gran just barks a laugh. “Oh~ I can already tell I’ll like _this one.”_

Then Aang pipes up beside her to relay the very important message that he too, has a nickname. Apparently the monks loved calling him “disappointment,” so they’re a matching set. 

Gran-Gran howls in laughter and reiterates to her grandchildren that she _definitely_ likes the strays they’ve adopted. 

Zoka can’t find any reason to disagree. 

>>>>>>>>>>.

Their alliance becomes acquaintanceship and then a tentative friendship over the following days and weeks and months that they remain in this little village of ice and dying traditions. 

Zoka finds it breathtakingly beautiful and heart wrenchingly kind, how the tribe members take one look at her, a fire nation princess, and see only her burns and her heart. Her people have stripped them of everything, yet they find it in themselves to hold it against - not her - but her father and the men who want this destruction and horror. 

They see she is not her father, and Zoka will never be able to express how grateful she is to them for that. 

Gran-Gran lays out another bedroll for her and Katara teaches her how to wash clothes without them freezing and properly de-shell an urchin. Sokka takes her to the bonfire in the middle of their village, the one they gather around every night, and sits her down between the chief’s children and his mother in law, and he gives her a piece of his culture. 

Holds it out carefully between two clumsy, shaking hands and offers it like his heart on a platter, begging her with the bluest eyes she’s ever seen, to please _please_ not rip it apart. Just a child who’s been forced to become a leader and warrior when he should have no responsibility but to be happy. 

She nods slightly to him, and when the stories being passed through the circle reaches her, Zoka tells the legend of Agni’s flaming children, puts her own peace offering out into the opening, and she meets the gazes of the tribes people head on. 

She shouldn’t feel so at home, here in a nation that is not her own with benders of a different element and the “mortal enemies,” of her own. She shouldn’t, but Azula shouldn’t have burned and her uncle shouldn’t have wasted away and Aang shouldn’t have lost everything. 

Nothing is as it should be... and so, _everything_ is now possible. 

The avatar learns to bend water droplets and pull waves from the sea, perched on icebergs that rock beneath their feet like living creatures, and once he’s finished, they’ll be leaving to find an earthbending master. 

Of course, they can’t just go straight to fire, something he already has a teacher for, and _have_ to go by the cycle, but if that’s what it takes to get rid of Aang’s kicked puppy expression, then that’s what they’ll do. 

Everything’s going fine, Zoka’s finding a place in this strange new world and even, dare she say, _enjoying it?_ She tucks Aang into bed each night and soothes him when the nightmares inevitably come, ignoring the guilt because her people killed his and made him this way. 

She helps Katara cook each night and scolds Sokka when he calls it “woman’s work,” or insults her waterbending, and she sits down with the younger girl after Aang’s mastered her bending techniques better than she has and cradles her face, telling her _how amazing she is._

And a girl trying so desperately to be enough and be strong and an adult even when she’s not, it’s so horribly familiar it kills her a bit inside to see here big blue blue blue eyes gazing up at her through the tears. 

To see the face of a girl breaking down without a mother there to be the support system she desperately needs, with a father out fighting a war and a grandmother far too busy running a village to be able to fill every single role that’s empty. 

But damn does Gran-Gran try. 

And Zoka does too. She does what she can to be the closest to what all three children need right then, and she lifts Kana’s burden as well because it can’t be easy to raise two children in a world that wants them dead for different reasons and who have already lost so much before even reaching adulthood. 

  
  


Everything’s fine, and then Gran-Gran pushes through the tent flaps one evening while she’s ladling stew into their bowls and hands her grandson a letter without a word. Sokka’s wombly grin and croaked, “Dad’s coming home,” is the only thing Zoka needs to know to be afraid. 

She has no idea how the chief will react to having a fire nation princess in his midst, and she’s not exactly eager to find out. She slips out of her bed roll that night, carefully stepping over each child on her way to the exit. 

“Mama…? Mama don’t leave again.” A small voice mumbles, bleary with sleep behind her. It’s Katara, brave, independent, stubborn Katara half asleep in her bedroll still rubbing her half opened eyes. 

And Zoka can’t leave. 

“I won’t, little one. I won’t…” She soothes, dropping her pack back on the ground and settling down by Katara’s head. The girl seems to calm down, drifting back off to sleep now that she knows Zoka isn’t going anywhere. 

She strokes her brown hair and wonders how her life came to this moment right here, but does not regret it. Not one bit. 

>>>>>>>>>

Hakoda comes and his children are swept up into his arms in one great, big bear hug. The other villagers pay their respects and Zoka slips back into their tent to wait it out. He’ll come, eventually, there’s no point in speeding up the inevitable. 

She meets Hakoda and he’s much like his daughter with a dash of his son’s wildness and flickering glass fire eyes, but he also holds a quiet intensity that neither of them do, even when greeting his mother in law with a kiss to the cheek. 

His presence fills up the room in a different way then the other leaders she’s met throughout her life. His isn’t oppressive or suffocating, but gentle like the warmth of a bonfire wrapping around your bones. 

It’s strange and new and Zoka hides her face in her bowl of stew while the children regale him with their stories and enthusiasm. Gran-Gran kicks her beneath the blanket they’re sharing, draped over their laps, and the only reason she doesn’t kick back is the fiely piety drilled into her since she was born. 

Honestly, Zoka signed up for ending a war, not _this._

Hakoda catches her eye from across the steaming pot, and the writhes of silver make his blue eyes dance like living fire. 

And her heart beats in her chest. 

_Ba-bum_

_Ba-bum_

_Ba-bum_


End file.
